Two Caribbean Islands – Aruba and Curaçao
Aruba – the island we were never meant
to visit. Our scheduled visit was to the island of Antigua, but a hurricane out
that way caused a change of course to avoid it.
Avoid it we did without feeling even the edge of it.
We
moved South East overnight from the American Basin into the Caribbean Sea and
headed for the Dutch Antilles, which I’d never heard of. The Dutch West Indies
was not an area I knew existed. Dutch East
Indies – yes. Hutch, the Port Lecturer, told us the island of Aruba was only
small – 20 miles long and only narrow – with a population of just over 100,000.
The
ship tied up very close to the main town of Oranjestad, so we decided to take
the scooter on shore and explore it. There was a strong, very hot breeze that
had us holding our hats, and though the Westerly Trade winds make this island
virtually a desert, a cloud cover made it oppressively humid. We didn’t see
trees or any greenery.
The
surprise about the town was that it consisted of high class shopping – gold,
diamonds, crystal, jewelry of all kinds, expensive items like sunglasses. We
could not find a coffee shop among the several blocks of shops on one side of
the main road, or the stalls of clothing, souvenirs etc on the other side. Neither
could we easily find ramps for the scooter or wheel chairs to cross the roads.
We saw a Hard Rock Café down the street, but when we got there it was up steep
stairs and no use to us.
The
only ordinary type shop we stumbled upon was a Post Office where we enjoyed their air conditioning and bought
cards and stamps. We wondered where the locals bought their ordinary needs like
groceries and milk.
The
up market shops were cool and well kept, and the streets clean. Lots of modern,
good looking cars. We knew that Aruba had years of colonial rule by various
European powers and only became its own country in 1986, but remains a Dutch
Protectorate. Some of the buildings had a Dutch look about their roofs.
One
of the local tour guides told friends from our dining table that the Dutch had
taken a vast amount of gold from Aruba when they had control, and were still
giving Aruba a yearly payment to offset this. He told them that the people of
Aruba benefitted by this a great deal. Housing
is subsidized, and there are other social benefits.
The
glorious beaches are Aruba’s greatest draw card for tourists, and many of the
passengers enjoyed the swimming. Obviously they experienced a different view of
the island’s facilities among the resorts and hotels than we did, and claimed
the beaches were some of the best for swimming in the world. There are reefs
and a World War II shipwreck to explore under water, and various kinds of
‘submarine’ exploration.
To
ensure that Aruba remains safe from overdevelopment, a moratorium on new hotel
construction in the past decade has limited the number of new resorts springing
up.
Our
experience of Aruba was not that of a Caribbean Resort, so after wandering the
main shopping area for a few hours we retired gratefully to the cool of our
‘home away from home’ – the Sea Princess.
Curaçao
was a different kind of place. Now – how do you
pronounce this place? The name is familiar because of the orange distilled
spirit produced here. I guess we all pronounced it our own way. But the correct way is the way the locals do.
The
‘çao’ is pronounced ‘sow’ as in ‘mother pig’. It’s that
French type thingey under the ‘c’ that does it, and which I think I was very
clever to find on my keyboard. It’s hard to say– but think “cure-ah-sow” and
you have it.
We booked a
‘Scenic Drive, Willemstad and Sea Aquarium’ Princess tour in Curaçao. The Sea
Princess docked close to the Capital City of Willemstad – a UNESCO World
Heritage Site, and we set out to get our sticker from the appointed lounge
meeting place, and then go down to the buses on the wharf.
This was a
different experience from the usual.
Usually when we have our tour sticker with its colour and number, we
just head for the buses on the wharf and find the bus labeled the same. Today a
local tour guide – a young woman dressed in green – herded us to a particular
spot on the wharf and told us to wait until the whole tour group had assembled
so she could lead us –like Noah, two by two – to a waiting coach.
This morning it
was hot but overcast, and then it started to rain on the wharf. I don’t know
who started it, but when it rained the ‘two by two’ thing didn’t happen, and we
found ourselves in a herd heading for the coaches. Only this time the coaches
hadn’t got the familiar signs (eg“Princes Cruises – Red 2”) and there ensued a
shemozzle to find our coach. After a while, one of the green tour guides just
took us on his bus, though it was the wrong one, and there we stayed plugged
into the wrong tour for the rest of the day.
No problem. Though we discovered
this tour was very similar to the one we supposed to be on. Later we did see
the ‘two by two’ in operation for other tours but we weren’t impressed.
The very first
thing we saw as wedrove downtown was the colour of the place. All the buildings
were painted a vivid colour. The buildings looked a bit Dutch, but the colours
were everywhere: blue, green and yellow
– especially all shades of orange. The guide told us that one of the early
Dutch governors disliked white buildings and decreed that they should be painted in colour. He claimed that the
Governor also owned the only paint factory. Was this how it happened? How could
we know!
Our scenic drive
took us about the city and everywhere was brightly painted, though there were a
few – very few – old and decrepit houses with flaked paint, decaying walls and
roofs – and even graffiti! As we went up to the hilly parts the houses became
large, ornate and very expensive looking. Near the beaches we passed some
‘Resorts’ looking pretty cool, and the guide told us they get many European
tourists coming here for beach holidays.
There was a very
impressive high bridge – the Queen Juliana - linking the two sides of the city,
and a crowd of people surged out from a ferry just arrived from the other side for work. This was an
early tour and it was only about 8.45am by now. There were storage facilities
down by the waterfront here, and we wondered if it was a refinery for oil.
There were also some factories in this area.
Although Curaçao
has the same climate at Aruba, there were trees and greenery which had been
absent in Aruba. I wondered if they had desalination to give them more
disposable water? Or was there subterranean water below the island they could
draw on? I have no answer to this.
We passed a
large well presented stone church and the guide told us the main religion of
the island is Catholic, in spite of the island being “Dutch”. The Catholic religion is a relic of the time
the Spanish controlled it, but Dutch is the main language. The guide claimed
that up to three languages were taught in both State and Church schools in
primary school, with more languages added in High School, so that most people
were fluent in more languages than their peers in Holland, or other European
countries. There are just over 160,000 people here.
By 9.30am were
at Chobolobo where the famous Curaçao liquer is distilled. It is a small
distillery attached to a five star Resort of the same name. Hard to believe
that this is the place where all the Curaçao liquer for the world is made. It
was an old fashioned distillery about the size of a cottage industry with maybe
20 staff there on the distilling line and in the tasting and sales area. It
seemed very early to be having alcohol, but the little plastic tubs were thimble
small. There was a plentiful supply of all the flavours on offer, and we were
told there was no limit to the sampling. The time factor put a stop to that as
the call to the coach soon came.
Our next tour
stop was at the Sea Aquarium, where we joined a hundred or so other tourists
for the Dolphin Show. We sat on concrete outdoor seating tiered up from a large
pool labeled “Dolphin Academy”. The audience was made up of six or seven
busloads of tourists, and the commentary began in Spanish for the tourists from
the South American Cruise ship also in port. The bulk of the commentary then changed
to English for the rest of us.
Six girls and
one young man all had their own one or two dolphins that they trained, and they
proceeded to put their dolphins through their act by hand signs and verbal
commands. It was a great show as dolphins jumped in ones, twos or threes and
dived again, jumped straight up into the air or even lifted their trainer high
into the air balanced on one foot on a dolphin nose.
There were tanks
and tanks of fish and other sea creatures and we wandered through avenue after
avenue of exhibits until the call came to go back to the coach. I thought it
could take hours to go through all of the exhibits, and was sorry it was time
to leave.
So it was back
to the ship through the painted city, and for us a quiet afternoon. Some people
were dropped off in the main street shopping area with instructions as to how
to make their way back to the ship when they were ready, and we set sail after
all were on board at 3.30pm.
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